another mazism...

so, mazerick has this new thing, which i am pretty sure i can attribute to grandpa bruce dickie.... it's called funny joke time. he'll tell me some ridiculous joke like, "there were two guys walking down the street and they got hit in the head with toilet paper." or something like that. so i started telling him knock knock jokes...

knock knock: who's there?

dwayne.

dwayne who?

dwayne the bathtub i'm dwowning.

knock knock: who's there?

jello

jello who?

jell0 hit the tv.

knock knock: who's there?

apple.

apple who?

apple hit the tv.

like how they go? we laughed really hard. that's all that really mattered. he wanted to do them all night. he kept saying... knock knock. knock knock. knock knock. he just wanted to keep doing "funny joke time." finally i said, okay i get the last one. he was like, okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

knock knock: who's there?

good.

good who?

good night.

hahahahahahahahahahaha. he laughed and laughed and laughed. i shut his door and he yelled... hahahahagoodnight!

a good ending to the day :)

however, 2 hours later i hear him crying. he never cries in the middle of the night.. he's an awesome sleeper. so, i come upstairs to check on him. his door is open. i say, maz, where are you? he keeps crying. i begin to worry. what if he's on the roof again? that would suck. anyway. i walk down the hall... the crying continues. where are you maz? crying "i'm in your room." he's pretty hysterical. i get to my room... he is underneath the covers and the pillows. i say, what is wrong? he cries hysterically... i dropped my teddy. oh my. so i give him his teddy. by this time daddy is also upstairs. he picks maz up and comforts him.. anyway, maz wants to lay in here with us for a while. so, i decide it's time to stay upstairs. i'm talking with maz a bit.

"why were you crying?"

"cause i dropped my teddy."

"why didn't you just get down to get it?

"it was real dark and kind of scary."

"why did you come in here?"

"i touched my mickey nightlight cause i wanted to see if it was hot, but i touched the side and it wasn't hot and then i turned it and the side wasn't hot, but the lightbulb was, and then i unplugged it. so i went to the bathroom and then came to your room. i want to watch baseball. does daddy like baseball..."

i think he's fine :)

so i took him back to his room.

"can we do funny joke time?"

what a kid :)

what's to it...

sometimes we get off to a rough start. it could be a day, a job, a relationship, a game.... just about anything. well, today i felt like i got off to a rough start. mazerick and i came downstairs at about 8 this morning. i give him something for breakfast, but instead of eating he brings me some oreo cookies. i tell him he needs to eat some cereal or something halfway healthy before he eats oreos. i know. i'm such a mean mom. anyway, he just throws a fit. starts crying/whining... whatever you want to call it. i tell him as long as he is whining i am not going to get him anything. a few minutes later he says... mom, we need to go put my pull up on the trampoline.

*side note.... i got him an alligator pool yesterday at a garage sale for 5 bucks... have i said i love garage sales lately? well, I love garage sales!

anyway, i laughed and we went about our day. i picked up around the house... he ate some yogurt for breakfast... didn't want to eat anything more... just wanted the oreos. didn't get the oreos, but anyway... i let him watch some cartoons while i picked up and took my shower. once i was ready i said... okay maz, lets go... and if you do a good job while i'm helping my friend move then you can come home and we can set up your pool.

let me fast forward a little bit here. i have the pool up and mazerick is having the time of his life with 2 neighbor boys. it was so fun to watch. yes i got wet, but it was definitely worth seeing the smiles on their faces, and hearing their laughter :)

anyway... the boys eventually left and mazerick kept saying... "come on mom... come in and get baptized..." so cute. definitely the highlight of my day :)

so i said all of this to say... sometimes it doesn't matter how you start out... God'll work it all for good :) every last bit of it.

sometimes

sometimes God speaks to us loud and clear. sometimes it's because we are listening. sometimes it's because we want something specific. sometimes it just is.

have you ever been praying about something and God kind of does a u-turn on you? have you ever figured out when God speaks to you the most? have you ever tried to stop your thoughts and say, okay God, speak to me what you want to? have you ever been thinking about one thing specifically and God cuts in and tells you something that you feel is totally random to what your agenda had in mind?

yeah. God did that to me tonight. and, it helped me figure something out. God speaks to me in these late hours. i wanted to be sleeping. i tried to sleep. after i had laid in bed for over an hour i began praying. praying for this youth center that God has put on my heart. praying for children. praying for our family.

and guess what God did...

in regards to family he said, "Do not worry. You will have more childen."

but later, yeah, later.... after i continued praying, for the youth center.... and specifically for a building.... guess what He does to me. he says.... LOUD AND CLEAR.... "Stop drinking mountain dew."

Boo. yeah, totally not a fan of that. but.... when God told Jonah to go somewhere and he didn't.... uh, well.... not so good things happened to him... so, guess i will stop drinking mountain dew. it's a sad day.

must repeat.... times infinity

He made me. I am His. He loves me. He made me. I am His. He loves me. He made me. I am His. He loves me. He made me. I am his. He loves me..

oh yeah, and this video below makes me emotional every time. i can never make it through dry eyed.

it's cardboard testimonies... watch it. it's worth your time. even if you've seen it before.

notes from an eavesdropper

so, my friend regan totally blogs conversations that she hears. it's great. i love it. i am so going to do it. especially when we don't have the internet anymore. it may be a little more difficult to disguise things as i live in totally small town america, but i will. it's going to be so much fun. i'm stoked. bring on the no internet days so i can blog once again from the coffee shop and the library... and anywhere else i may be able to eavesdrop... good times!

tim estes... a random blogger

so, i don't know this guy, but he has some great things to say in his blog... so great that i figured i needed to copy and paste this one on religion...

Religious Bologna

The older I get the more I detest religion. I mean really! The very organizations that are purported to propagate the gospel wind up being the thing that at least becomes a stumbling block, and at worst totally drives people away from a relationship with God.

Religion is sickening for many reasons. Mostly because it is a device to measure...who's bigger, who's better, who's more spiritual, who's the strongest, who's holiest etc. The fact is none of the devices work. Religious people wind up making themselves smaller and invaluable to the real purposes of God, because God seems to be little interested in man's way of doing things.

In religious circles we find politics of positions. Under the guise of being humble or spiritual we subtly climb religious ladders to assume positions of men. We like them too! The heartier the pat on the back, the more we purr with our pseudo humility.

The bias of religion is painful. Although we are supposed to love all men, we wind up loving those who meet our criteria, who play our flavor of music, who preach our candy-stick sermons and doctrines. In the mix of religion, many walk away from a would be experience with God due to our religion.

Religion is the chief source of hypocrites. If we wouldn't be so concerned with our man-made boundaries, we could focus more on just being real and living openly...even admitting our shortcomings for the purpose of working on them and getting better. But religion....no way! We hide behind our masks of righteousness while we rot inside. There is no place of accountability so religion becomes chiefly responsible for our spiritual abscesses.

Jesus was constantly fighting religion. The Pharisees, neath the cloak of righteousness, were called what they really were by God in flesh. He wasn't the least bit impressed with their traditions or their masquerades. Jesus was much kinder to those who admitted their failure and lack. "Lord be merciful to me a sinner" meets God's approval much faster than, "Look how much I pray, give, serve, etc."

Religion has become a place of competition in our cities. Ministerial Alliances and para-church organizations spend valuable time debating their opinions and flavors. Much energy is wasted tippy toeing around personalities, and the big man on the block...be that the up and coming church, or a church connected to employment or a church connected to a place of higher learning. To prevent 'offending' the wrong people, the work of God....I mean the real, down to earth work of God gets placed on a shelf. Religion is always more concerned about what 'they' think than what 'He' thinks.

May religion die...and the simple Christ-exalting gospel of Jesus Christ take it's rightful place.

if you got this far... leave a comment :)

today

so, i went to my moms to borrow her lawn mower. i got her new weed eater too. it's fantastic. it was really cold out so i figured... what a great time to mow the lawn. i also used my moms old ford aspire to bring the lawnmower over here. (the picture above is similar to what my moms car look like minus the yellow) anywho... so, my mom is helping me load the lawnmower and weed eater into the hitch. she tells me... "be careful that the hitch doesn't fall on your head. it hurts" at one point the hitch begins to fall and we are able to catch it before it hits either of us. oh yeah. another funny thing... this particular car is very old... over 200,000 miles... a wabberjocky stick... like, you've got to pull it up and make it in the exact right position in order to shift gears... and i haven't driven a stick in YEARS.... so, we get the stuff in the car... and i leave to go to my house... that experience in itself was pretty humerous... simply because i decided it was probably best to go really slow and just keep the car in first gear. i did pretty good. i only stalled one time and had to start the car over, and no cars were behind me :) the one time a car was behind me i was at a stoplight and able to make it go pretty smoothly :) anywho, so i get to my house and get michael to help me get the lawnmower out. we open the hitch and begin getting it out. of course i forgot that the hitch falls easily. so what happens? as michael and i are lifting the lawnmower out of the car the hitch falls and gets me right in the head. OUCH! i fell to the ground, held my head, and cried for a few minutes... when i realized blood wasn't oozing everyhere and i wasn't dying i saw the humor in it. pretty quickly as a matter of fact. i may have given myself a concussion because i "forgot." oh my. hopefully next time i remember. so, i started to mow the lawn... i'm about half way finished when it starts pouring down rain... i had about 5 more strips to finish the front lawn so i decided to go ahead and at least finish the front. it will at least look better from the main road :) so now... i'm soaking wet... with some ibuprofen in my system for the pain in the head :) blogging... laughing... and simply enjoying being home with my awesome family :) with a 1/2 mowed lawn.

the beginning and the end.

i love Jesus.

lifes changes

*disclaimer* i am definitely not an expert on parenting, but i do have some thoughts and opinions. they are written below.

when you have a kid your entire life changes. and as that kid grows up life continues to change.

~the thing that used to be the main thing (yourelf) is no longer the main thing anymore. that is how it is for the first couple of years.

~you forget what life was like before that kid was born.

~you are 100% responsible for that kid.

~you love like you never dreamed of loving.

~you have to keep reminding yourself that there comes a time when i will no longer be 100% responsible for my child.

~the time comes when the kid makes their own choices.

~i can't be by his side ALL of the time.

~the most important thing in my life is not the yard or the house, but it's my family.

~Jesus loves us all no matter what we do.

blessings

i've been thinking about all of my blessings. in no particular order they are my husband, my son, my extended family, my house, my junky car (that i'm hoping will last forever), my lawn (even though i have to mow it), my health, my Jesus, my friends, my stuff (all this stuff in our house that we've got), michaels job, my joy.

i know there are a ton more blessings in my life. the above are just a few that came quickly to mind. my son makes me laugh. a lot. let me tell you a story about my day yesterday.

michael and i were at concord mall. we needed new cell phones... our old ones are junk, they were falling apart, not working, just time for new ones. so, we're in the us cellular store getting ready to make the final purchase. they are transferring all of our old information from our old phones onto our new phones. i randomly show the sales guy the picture of the kids on my wallet. on the picture is mazerick, zane, brody, and morgan. those are my brothers kids and mine. i claim them all :) anywho. so, the sales guy was like.... "is this a joke? are those your real kids? that looks like a faux-photo." now that was awesome. it made my day. and, many days to come i'm sure :) it got me thinking about how blessed i am. no, those children aren't fake. i didn't photoshop them in the picture. those are real children! those are my children! well, they aren't all my children. only one really is, but i have called my brother and sister in law and told them that since i've only got maz, who is absolutely awesome i am just going to pretend. so, i've got 4 of the cutest kids in history. just saying :)

our God is good. he has blessed me. i'm sure he has blessed you too. think about it :)

the boy who cried wolf

so... today i told mazerick the story about the boy who cried wolf. he listened, but i highly doubt that he got it. i told him... honey, when you say ouch to everything it's kind of like the boy who cried wolf. and then i proceeded to tell him the story. by the end of the story i was having a hard time saying wolf... and then he was like... what is wolf?

today.... every single time i was with him alone he cried. not just whimpered... but cried. oh my gosh. it was not fun.

he was great whenever we were around other people.... of course. but when it was just us... not so much. weird.

anyway... after michael took over for a bit this evening i went to the computer and submitted something to the secretary of state to make "the den" incorporated. that was fun. we shall see waht comes of it :)